In some data communication networks, flow control management includes buffering incoming traffic. Various buffering schemes in network switches are known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,993,032, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes buffering arrangements (e.g., via buffer concatenation) to support differential link distances at full bandwidth.
As another example, U.S. Patent Application Publication 2011/0058571, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a communication apparatus that includes a plurality of switch ports, each including one or more port buffers for buffering data that traverses the switch port. A switch fabric is coupled to transfer the data between the switch ports. A switch control unit is configured to reassign at least one port buffer of a given switch port to buffer a part of the data that does not enter or exit the apparatus via the given switch port, and to cause the switch fabric to forward the part of the data to a destination switch port via the at least one reassigned port buffer.
As yet another example, U.S. Patent Application Publication 2013/0028256, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a method for communication, in a network element that includes multiple ports. The method includes buffering data packets entering the network element via the ports in input buffers that are respectively associated with the ports. Storage of the data packets is shared among the input buffers by evaluating a condition related to the ports, and, when the condition is met, moving at least one data packet from a first input buffer of a first port to a second input buffer of a second port, different from the first port. The buffered data packets are forwarded to selected output ports among the multiple ports.